A streetside glimpse of India from Bangalore - no paid news, no lobbying, no plants, no stringing along - just pure viewpoints. My own political education. Satire Alert (At times)!
Because, nothing is permanent, only interim!

Wednesday, September 05, 2007

Mumbai has a new fad - its paver blocks on road. Ideally a paver block should look something like this. But in Mumbai (unfortunately I don't have a pic yet) it will most definitely not be like this.

Paver blocks are now used in roads instead of the famed tar roads or concrete roads - though not sure why. I guess thats not the problem, the problem lies in how they are placed on roads and on which roads.

Roads which are quite good (again on a relative basis) are dug up and paver blocks are placed (for eg. road just outisde Mantralya in Mumbai). These roads were quite good in the first place so not sure why it was dug up and replaced.

Yes it looks neater because of the mix and match color combination but the blocks don't cover the entire road stretch. Most are tar based and then there is patch of paver blocks. The "connect "between the tar roads and paver blocks is the most troublesome - like the joints on flyovers.

Its almost like climbing a bridge at the "connect" with huge traffic jams due to this "disconnect". The paver blocks by themselves are shabbily laid which again results in pot holes, where the removal of one single block results more blocks getting loose and hence a even larger pothole than normal.

Mumbai roads have their own share of experimentation and almost nothing works. No prizes for guessing why.